The Mob Rules
by SinisterExaggerator
Summary: Todd and Jane Ianuzzi discover that one of their thrill kills comes at a dear, dear price. For LongSnakeMoan's "Todd and Jane - Takedown" Iron Chef, based on her fanfic, "Of All The People That Won't Be Missed".


Author's Note I: This story is a response to LongSnakeMoan's fanfic "Of All The People That Can't Be Missed", which, as of August 8, 2013, has yet to be posted in full on this website (it has been on the Paperpusher's Message Board, but membership is needed to read it, or anything else there). There are eleven parts to that in total, and the plot of this story depends on the events in the tenth, so there's a bit of a spoiler here. Also, if "Of All The People" were to replace the fifth season, this would probably be the ultimate brick joke. There's one more thing I'd like to point out, which I'd like to save for the bottom.

**The Mob Rules**

Todd and Jane Ianuzzi sprinted into the van which they had delicately parked outside of Schloss Morgendorffer. Any other person might have trod more carefully, taking only blatantly unauthorized pictures and leaving only footsteps. The Romeo and Juliet killers, however, had a name to live up to, and it was this and their lovingly motivated hubris that accounted for the life taken and the blood, tissue, hair, pieces of skull, brain matter, and guts left sprinkled all over the walls inside. The four kids they had adopted, Adrian, Brianna, Courtney, and Dean (whose initials conveniently represented the first four letters of the alphabet), were waiting patiently inside, guns at their shoulders. They were champing at the bit to speed off, but the prospect of blowing away the first dumbfuck to approach them made even _Halo_ seem like a bore.

"Ready to roll?" Todd asked, grabbing the wheel. Jane sat shotgun (while armed with one).

With the volume of the resounding "YEAH!", Todd was both surprised and relieved that none of their trigger fingers had lurched in the process. They couldn't afford a bullet sailing through the van roof, though it seemed somewhat more rectifiable knowing that they couldn't afford the van, either. He reasoned that anyone asking would meet the same fate as the van's owner; where he was from, the only thing that solved gunshots were more gunshots. He scanned the area for any cars. There was nothing there, besides Helen and Jake's permanently parked vehicles and a spare limo across the street. He couldn't tell if it was occupied due to the tinted windows, but knowing who such vehicles were associated with, he figured that they'd naturally be on their side. Both lived by the Law of the Luger.

"Where we going, Uncle Todd?" a rambunctious Dean asked from the back.

"Let's think here," he said. After a moment in thought, he immediately turned in Jane's direction. "You know anywhere we could veg out for a few days? Preferably where no one can find us, and we can find them easily."

"The Dutchman Inn fits," she said. "It's a one-story motel, and you know that giant clog in the front? It vibrates a bit when anyone walks past it, and it's on the side with all the doors. Anyone goes past, and wham, bam, fuck you, ma'am."

"Sounds like a plan," he replied. "Those clothes we got are enough for a disguise, right?"

"I guess. Shame they didn't have any maternity clothes left. We could always swing by Ms. Johanssen's and steal ourselves an oversized muumuu."

"Gotta love your devotion to this reign of terror," Todd returned. "But the thing is, we want to keep the slaughter to a minimum here. I can just hear the sirens humming now."

Everyone inside looked at him, mouth agape. "I mean inside my head." What followed was the first time he was able to accurately place the sound of pure relief. It came in the form of an extraordinarily coordinated sigh.

The Dutchman Inn was approaching, and only a four-way intersection separated them from its limited, yet always welcomed, amenities. The kids were asking for him to go _Grand Theft Auto_ and run past the red light like the meth-addled son of a speedball made flesh. He said that if he went any faster, he and the rest of them would become an open target. When they wondered what that meant, he said they'd be fucked, which comfortably shut them up. That was until the limo became apparent.

"What the fuck?" Jane asked. There was a limo parked horizontally in the road, effectively blocking it. Todd's eyes jerked open. It looked strangely familiar; if he let his imagination go, he would have thought it was the same one from Glen Oaks Lane. He tried to save face.

"Maybe there's a funeral procession or something. Here, let's try the left road."

As he swerved in traffic, Adrian grew inquisitive. "Hey, wait, Uncle Todd. You just said we'd be fucked if you went all crazy-"

"You quiet, Uncle Todd's sort of in an emergency right now," he grunted between gnashed teeth. No luck—the left road was blocked off by an identical limo. So was the right. When they heard the _zoom_ behind them, they knew they were boxed in.

"Todd, dear," Jane spoke, "if we weren't outlaws, I'd think the Mafia or something was after us."

"Uh…how would you react if I told you that I saw these earlier and didn't say anything about them?"

He didn't get a reply, mostly as a result of the tranquilizer dart shot through the van window. The rest of the blame fell on him, who couldn't possibly expect a reply once the knock-out juice got him in the neck, too.

The children screamed, but they didn't hear it.

They all awoke to the musty scent of a long-forgotten warehouse. They instinctively tried to block their nose, but the leather restraints strapping them to the metal chairs on which they sat didn't allow that. They just had to take it. Minutes flew by. Then, a group of thirteen men walked in. They were all dressed in black tuxedos and carried automatic rifles strapped to their backs. Six settled behind them, one per chair, and seven gathered in front. The Ianuzzis noticed that out of all of them, only one was not wearing a ski mask. His black hair contained enough oil to flood another gulf, and the sneer he wore could have believably possessed a life of its own.

"Well, then," he said. "Look who we have here. The Attention Whore Killers themselves. Sort of AWKward that you're at the end of the gun, now, huh?" They were silent. "That was a pun, see? You're supposed to laugh." Silence. "Laugh, damn it!" A nervous choir of "haha"s and "oho"s broke out. The man continued. "And it looks like you got yourselves a little fan club here. Do you have a theme song? You don't want to let all this brainwashing go to waste, do you?"

It was Todd that mustered up the courage to speak. "Now listen here, buddy, you leave them kids alone, or I'm gonna tear you a new one. Hell, I'd tear you _into_ a new one. You'd probably have fun, being all asshole. Not so different from now, I suppose." The slap was hard, and that was how Todd Ianuzzi found out that you really _couldn't_ help turning your head in the opposite direction when someone used your cheek to achieve the effect of one hand clapping.

"You have no business calling anyone an asshole, son," the man spat back. "That all stops when you kill your first hitchhiker. I'd go over the _Team America_ speech right now, but I don't like making my business any longer than it needs to be." The kids giggled wildly. The socks in their mouths stopped that.

"Could you at least tell us why we're, you know, _tied to fucking chairs with guns to our heads_?" Jane called.

"I was about to get there," he muttered. "Ever heard of a man named Jake Morgendorffer?"

"Heard of him?" Jane replied. "Fuck, we've seen what his skull looks like. There a problem with that?"

"You seem aware enough of your situation. _Yes, there is a goddamn problem with that._ You see, I first met him when he spun over to Middleton. He was looking for a college loan. I let him on about some of it, the candy shop, the ponies, you know. He didn't take it, but he ended up coming back a little later. He lost out on a deal with Buzzdome, so he came to us. It was a rock solid deal, he always paid us back. Now, you see, when someone takes out a loan with us, he's _ours_, you got that? He's ours to loan to, ours to respect. And occasionally, ours to kill. And if someone infringes on any of those rights, they end up going where…actually, where you are now. And definitely where you're heading."

"So, let me get this straight, man," Todd interrupted. "We killed one of your clients. You got your panties in a bunch, and now you're gonna put a bullet in us…what about the kids?"

"What about them? You two are the ones on the homicidal, omnicidal rampage. Sounds like these kids aren't the highest of your priorities." He paused for the reaction. He wasn't disappointed. "We're not going to off them. We have an orphanage we loan to. And with what you think learning experiences are for them, you'll probably appreciate the fact that it's located right in the heart of the city. The inner city." The socks in the kids' mouths danced amid muffled cries of dread.

"Oh, okay. Sorry for the whole 'accidentally icing one of your clients' thing, now will you please let us go?" Todd sheepishly offered.

The man laughed. Saliva hit the Ianuzzis' faces, and they were once more helpless to do anything about it. "For a ruthless killer like yourself, you sure pussy out under pressure. I'd think you'd know a thing or two about mob culture, both organized and unorganized. Hell, the last one got your asses out of Highland for you, I saw the news. To put it in short, the mob rules. You think _we're_ going to give _you_ mercy at this point? If you really think you deserve it, let me ask you something. When you offed that old woman in the cabin, what was her name, Sloane? When you killed Odette Sloane, what did you feel when she looked at your sneering face as you kicked her to the ground? I bet she was begging you to get off her, to stop the madness, to let her go. And you both just watched her try to escape.

"I heard that conversation by the van, too, when you got out of the house. When she was in that window…what mercy did you offer her? And what makes you think you deserve any?" With a strong hand, he scooped up the tears welling up in their eyes and smoothed his hair with them. "And before you tearfully accuse me of being a hypocrite and a madman and a monster, I think I should tell you that I don't kill because I want to. It's on a need-for-blood basis. All is fair in the Mafia. Harsh, but fair. We shouldn't even be shooting you in the head first. That'd be painless. Not even nearly harsh enough. I have a mind to shoot you both in the crotch! But like I said before about time, and since I just related this entire soliloquy, I think I'll settle for some nice brain splatter." He pointed his finger over their heads and started deliberating which would come first, in the most obvious, yet haunting way possible. "Eeny, meeny, miney, moe…"

As soon as Todd saw the finger stop in front of his head, he shrunk a little in his chair. The man in back of him lowered his gun accordingly, and his head crumbled like Play-Doh with the shot. Ordinarily, Jane would have been enamored by the color wheel, but the reds, pinks, and browns gushing from his head mocked her as they painted her, and they did not color her enthused. As an artist, she desperately wanted to put him back together. She wanted to reach for every mass of dead cells lying on her, the floor, and the walls and put them back in, to try and reanimate him, to start where they'd left off. There was no reviving him now. There was no last-minute evasion. There was no way out. Those straps were a bitch. She could hear the whoosh of the gun behind her as it was raised. She was expecting the bang anytime now. What she got, however, was a familiar rasp.

"Hold on," said a voice behind her. "I just want to GET something out of the WAY first."

The leader shut his eyes. "God, Anthony, what is it now?"

"Don't WORRY. It's not going to MATTER."

Jane could only stutter. "M-Mr. DeMartino?"

She couldn't see it, but she could feel the smirk. His ski mask sailed down behind her. "YES, Jane. How do you THINK I manage to KEEP that godforsaken HOUSE of mine?"

"That's you? Oh, wow. And for a moment I thought I was dead."

"Oh, don't WORRY. You ARE."

"Wh-wh-what?" she sputtered. A thought raced into her mind. In the most benign voice possible, she responded, "I thought nice, gentlemanly Mafiosi like you weren't supposed to ice a little old woman like me."

"THAT'S where you're WRONG, Jane. You're NOT just a WOMAN. You're not as INNOCENT you THINK you might BE. You're a CRIMINAL, a MURDERER. And that's against both the LAW and the MOB. That DOESN'T mean you weren't a PLEASURE to have in CLASS, though. I thought I could at LEAST send you out with a BANG."

It was a day of discovery for all. At that moment, a good seventeen people finally ascertained the sound of gurgling while laughing. It was a killer.

Individually, DeMartino was not spared one for himself. As he filed out with the rest of them, he discovered the one part of Jane that wasn't so angular.

The beaming grin on her corpse forever followed him through the musty warehouse door.

XXXXXX

Author's Note II: I decided to put in the twist of DeMartino being a mobster as a reference to LongSnakeMoan's exemplary fanfic, "Abattoir Blues". Me and my whimsy...


End file.
